


The Curse of Summerfield

by thetransgirlwhoneverwas



Series: Fictober 2019 [1]
Category: Bernice Summerfield (Books & Audio), Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Family Fluff, Gen, spoilers for The Curse of Fenman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 08:04:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20850179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetransgirlwhoneverwas/pseuds/thetransgirlwhoneverwas
Summary: Avril Fenman is dead. The wounds she left aren't.





	The Curse of Summerfield

“I thought I might find you here.”

Bernice Surprise Summerfield took a few seconds to find her footing before sitting down a little too hard on the rocks outside the bunker, next to her son.

“Really?” Peter replied.

“No, not really,” Benny admitted. “I’ve been wandering around the bunker for ages looking for you. You never came to talk to me.”

“I didn’t want to,” Peter replied with the tact and sharpness of a round brick. He did that a lot now, Benny thought to herself. Her son. The one she’d failed to be there for.

“You should come on in,” Benny encouraged him. “Advent’s only just started and Jack’s already plastered. You won’t believe what he says about the Epoch when he’s had a few!”

“No thanks,” Peter shut down the suggestion without hesitation. Benny sighed to herself. Maybe he could do with some time, she thought. But not time alone. Time alone, with nothing but your thoughts cycling around in your head. That could hurt a person more than a dirty look from their son would.

“Was it what Fenman said?” she asked after a few seconds.

“It doesn’t matter what Fenman said, does it?” Peter replied, not even bothering to mask the aggression. “She’s dead.”

“Thank God for that,” Benny said to herself.

“Thank Irving actually, I think,” Peter answered, with a little more levity than before. Benny smirked, hoping Peter would see and the mood would be lifted. He did. It wasn’t.

“Soooooo…” Benny drifted off, having started the sentence without knowing where she was going to end it, and failing to come up with a good ending she could ad lib. Peter let her sentence drag itself to a silence without answering, his face as inscrutable as ever, but his ears continued to droop.

They both sat in silence for a few minutes before Benny had the courage to talk to her son again.

“It’s about Antonio, isn’t it?”

Peter said nothing, but that just confirmed Benny had hit the problem straight on. She let him be for a minute before he spoke up.

“It’s because she was right.”

“Hmm? What, Fenman?” Benny asked, and Peter nodded silently in response. “Screw Fenman, everything she said was a load of old crap, you know that.”

“But it wasn’t!” Peter cried back. “Because Antonio died! He died, and I watched it happen, and I just...forgot! The man I loved died in front of me and I just forgot it happened!”

“Fenman was screwing with your memories, she did it to all of us-” Benny started, but Peter interrupted her.

“No, she didn’t. She pretended to be Antonio, but I still remembered him dy-...dying…” Benny looked over at Peter and saw him trying to hide his tears from her. She moved to put her arm around him, but stopped herself. Maybe not just yet.

“I saw him! I saw him die and I knew that he was dead and I _knew_ that he wasn’t real but I forgot, I _chose_ to forget because I wanted it to not be true, I needed it to not be true, and I couldn’t face the fact that it was!”

Peter wasn’t even trying to pretend he wasn’t crying anymore. He didn’t seem to care anymore.

“So I pretended it wasn’t true. Because forgetting what he did for me and disrespecting his memory was _easier_ for me than the truth!”

Benny gave up any semblance of tact and hugged him, really hugged her son for the first time since she’d found him on Legion, the first time since he’d grown up and made a life without her. And for the first time in a very long time, Peter let himself openly cry in front of his mother. They hugged for a long time, and it felt vastly overdue and not nearly long enough.

As Peter stopped sobbing and they separated, Benny heard him whisper “thank you” as loud as he could manage. She looked her son in the eyes and took a deep breath.

“Peter,” she started. “I know what it’s like to lose people. Not someone like Antonio, but I get it. We are Summerfields. You know what Summerfields do when we lose people?”

Peter sighed deeply. “We accept it and move on,” he replied, glum.

“Hell no,” Benny replied with fire in her voice, and Peter looked up. “We fight back.”

Peter looked his mother in her eyes, and for the first time since they’d met on Legion, gave her a genuine, radiant smile.

“Fenman was target number one,” Benny continued, the flame now burning in her eyes just as fiercely as in her words. “Next, Bastion.”

Peter’s ears perked.

“I’ll talk to Irving,” Bernice saw her fire matched in her son’s eyes. “Whatever else we may be, the Summerfields are never ones to let injustice stand if there’s anything we can do.”

“I haven’t felt like a Summerfield in a long time,” Peter countered, but he didn’t mean it. Benny placed her hands on his shoulders, and looked deep in his eyes. She saw years of pain, isolation and despair melt away into a fierce, blazing hope.

“Then I think it’s high time I show you what being a Summerfield is all about.”


End file.
